cee fund spring 2015 - cnuceefund.com · on the rise spring 2015 2 what’s inside photography by...

Spring 2015 update

ON THE RISE VOL 2

ON THE RISE SPRING 2015

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What’s inside

Photography by CNU student, Angelica Shaw

pg 3 Snapshot pg 4 New leadership

pg 5 New culture pg 6 Investment Report

pg 7 Third Annual Financial Summit

pg 8 CEE Fund Goes Green pg 9 Newport News Library Outreach

pg 10 Advisory Board implementation

pg 11 New donor benefits pg 12 +Bonus updates

ON THE RISE

ceefund.cnu.edu invest in education


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SNAPSHOT

46 Active members

Over $60,000

3 2 1 AUM

Over 20%

ROI

Educational events Financial Summit Financial Literacy Classes Trading Tuesdays

Portfolios Standard Portfolio Green Portfolio

Scholarship for $1,000 (October 2014) This was the second scholarship we have awarded. We are currently funding scholarships at a rate of 1 per year and are looking to double this to 1 per semester. Congrats Thuy Pullen!


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NEW LEADERSHIP

Mitch Phillips, CEO Junior: Finance/Marketing

Faris Sleem, CIO Junior: Finance

Minor in Spanish

Leighton Stone, CDO Senior: Finance/Management

Minor in German

Marshall Segars, CFO Sophomore: Finance/Accounting

Minor in Economics

Ryan Carwile, COO Junior: Communications

Minor in Psychology/Sociology

Addit

ional

leade

rship

Check out ceefund.cnu.edu for full bios of Fund members

Connect with us on

LinkedIn!


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AND MUCH MORE…

Contestants manage a simulation portfolio on Investopedia for a month with $10,000

in it. Person with greatest ROI is the winner. Open to any CNU student.

NEW CULTURE Putting the ‘fun’ in CEE Fund is a harder task than it appears. On top of school, social lives, work, Greek life, other organizations and maybe even a little sleep, CEE Funders then have to commit to meetings throughout the week to progress the Fund. So, being with the CEE Fund might as well be an enjoyable time. Here are some things we’ve implemented to make the CEE Fund more exciting:

WOLF OF THE WEEK AKA EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK

INVESTMENT MADNESS THE ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT

WOLF OF WARWICK INVESTING CHALLENGE

A member gets recognized each week for his/her outstanding performance

A 32 stock bracket full of the stocks in the DOW and two wild cards. Fund members set their brackets and hope for victory.

A goal this year was to get every one more involved in CEE Fund social events and we did just that.


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INVESTMENT REPORT and investment team update

The CEE Fund investment portfolio has had outstanding success

recently. Our mutual fund holdings have been providing much better

returns recently and our stocks have had amazing returns. Since the

new year (81 days), our stocks have provided almost a 10% return. This

is over five times that of the return of the S&P 500. Currently, we are

looking to diversify our portfolio with more exchange-traded funds and

change one of our mutual fund holdings so that we can continue to

outperform the market. Another big upcoming project for the

investment team is managing the money we received from the

sustainability grant. The grant will provide us with $5,000 that will be

invested in sustainable stocks and exchange-traded funds in the weeks

to come.

A great success of the investment team this semester has been

Trading Tuesday's. Trading Tuesday's are seminars that the investment

team holds every Tuesday open to all students in order to encourage

financial literacy and promote personal investment. Although we

mainly focus on personal investment, we also have multiple speakers

lined up for the coming weeks to come share some of their experience.

Overall, the investment team is working hard to continue to have our

holdings outperform the market and promote financial literacy within

the community at CNU.

Faris Sleem, CIO

10% Return in Q1 2015

Trading Tuesdays

Green Portfolio


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THIRD ANNUAL FINANCIAL SUMMIT and operations team update

The Operations team this year has gone through several changes

that are worth noting. As happens every year we have changed the

guard at our Chief Operations Officer position. Our former COO Mitch

Phillips has left the Operations team for greener pastures to become the

CEE Fund’s CEO and we have welcomed in our new COO, Ryan Carwile.

Operations team has also welcomed in new members, expanding our

team to 10 members. Part of this expansion was due to the merge that

Operations team has had with the HR team. This merge has led to

Operations team having an expanded role and a variety of new tasks to

handle such as elections, attendance, and keeping up Fund morale.

As much as things have changed, the Operations team continues

to put on the CEE Fund’s staple event, the Financial Summit. This year,

the 3rd Annual Financial Summit brought in 8 business professionals

who spoke about various topics relating to finance such as Financial

Life Planning, Foolish Investing, and Starting your own Business. The

event once again experienced success as more than 300 students

showed up excited to learn. One aspect of the Financial Summit this

year that is worth noting is that the quality of speakers we had were

unprecedented. Our speakers have or still work for some great

companies such as The Motley Fool, NASA, Morgan Stanley, and

Davenport and Company.

We’d like to give a special thanks to Jason Moser (keynote) and

our other speakers for helping us make this event as great as it was.

Ryan Carwile, COO

HR Merge

FS 2015


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CEE FUND GOES GREEN and development team update

It's hard to believe that the semester is quickly coming to an end, yet reflecting on this semester I am proud to see all that the Fund has accomplished. The Development team has been hard at work, but has focused more on support systems and future sustainability that will allow the Fund to operate more efficiently as successors take upon the challenge as opposed to building our account value. In order to better serve our donors, we have implemented a Customer Relationship Management system that allows us to keep records of conversations and key details of prospective donors, notes on existing donors as transitioning between officers can make it difficult to know each donor personally, and lastly the donor levels in which each person is placed. With systems such as these, we can take more time to get to know you in the future! Additionally, we are excited to announce another fantastic opportunity for the Fund. We have now affiliated with the CNU Sustainability Program (a part of Dominion Enterprises) where we wrote a grant to highlight the importance of CEE Fund and its goal of continued sustainability. In this grant, we elected to expand our portfolio horizons, which will now include funding to be allocated towards sustainable firms. With a focus on purely sustainable firms, this portion of our portfolio allows new research positions to be created within the Fund, as well as promotes the importance of working together towards a more sustainable planet. What a truly exciting semester it has been! Leighton Stone, CDO

Thank you Dominion Power, Dr. Hettche, and the Green Grant Committee for making this possible. Special shout out to former CEO, Tommy Doyle, for leading the grant writing and idea.

CRM System

Green Grant


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NEWPORT NEWS LIBRARY OUTREACH and finance team update

There have been a lot of exciting new things happening with the

Finance Team as of lately. Our funds value is now over $60,000 and

continues to rapidly grow. Another new thing being implemented is we are

starting to do financial forecasts each month to try and increase morale so

we can try to hit our own benchmarks.

This past school year, the CEE Fund has transitioned to being

known as the pinnacle for teaching financial literacy among students and

soon to the Newport News residents. The financial literacy program we

hold every semester is gradually gaining more popularity on campus, and

we have only heard positive things on the knowledge they are gaining. We

are also starting to plan a new program with the Newport News Library

System, to work with their after school program for teens in high school

educating them on financial topics. We will be covering everything from

budgeting, the economy, and fundamentals of investing in an interactive

way. We look forward to expanding our horizons and welcome any

questions or comments that you may have at any time regarding our

activities. Thank you for your continued support.

Marshall Segars, CFO

Financial Forecasting

Financial Literacy

2.0


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Every great group needs a great Board of Advisors to keep the vision

going. This is especially true in a situation like the CEE Fund, where you have

rapid turnover in leadership roles due to graduation.

The advisory board will be set up to keep a clean, consistent concept of

the Fund’s goals and values, provide mentorship, improve community out reach

and serve as a connection between current fund members and alumni.

The details are still being finalized, but the board will most likely consist of

our current academic advisors, some donors, CEE Fund alumni and CNU alumni

not associated with the CEE Fund.

The board will have limited rights as we want to ensure the Fund remain

student-run. We are looking to have semi-annual meetings, which would give

current members insights that have not been attainable thus far.

This will be a fantastic opportunity for both Fund members and advisors. If

you’d like to get involved or subscribe for updates on how we’re coming along

with the advisory board email [email protected]

ADVISORY BOARD IMPLEMENTATION

Become actively involved in one of the most unique student

organizations in the world.


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Next up on our list of goals is to get our total assets to equal $100,000. We

will reach success through applying to new grants, returns on our portfolio,

acquiring new donors, and most importantly, maintaining our current donors. In

the next few months we will be releasing details of our new “tiered” donor

program. This gives bonus benefits to donors based on their involvement with

the fund. Email [email protected] to get involved!

We can’t wait to start rolling this out to help keep our current donors in the

loop with the operations of the Fund.

- ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND -

60%

NEW DONOR BENEFITS

We plan on having another event similar to the Donor Appreciation Dinner in the fall. Stay tuned for a full “Donor

Benefit” update then!

invest in education


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BONUS UPDATES

We keep getting greener. We will be heading to the Virginia Energy and Sustainability Conference in April to meet with businesses to discuss the impact of sustainable energy on the environment and the economy.

Next year we will have our own Fund office. Here we will be able to hold interviews, small meetings and have a home base that people can go to with investing or personal finance questions.

We were featured in the annual campus magazine, CNU on the Move!


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Written and designed by Mitch Phillips, CEE Fund CEO DESIGNEDBYMITCH.WEEBLY.COM

ON THE RISE

We want to hear from you! [email protected]

Like us on Facebook for constant updates!

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Thank you for your support of the Fund ceefund.cnu.edu

cee fund spring 2015 - cnuceefund.com · on the rise spring 2015 2 what’s inside photography by...

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